Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon.

STRACHEY, Lytton.

$375.00

Item Number: 145349

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918.

First American edition of the work that placed Strachey firmly in the top rank of biographers. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth with printed paper spine labels, tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Cardinal Manning by Elliott & Fry, illustrated with five additional portraits of John Henry Newman, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon, and William Ewart Gladstone. In near fine condition with bookplate to the front pastedown. Housed in a custom leather clamshell box.

With the publication of Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey set out to breathe life into the Victorian era for future generations to read. Up until that point, as Strachey remarked in the preface, Victorian biographies had been "as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker, and wear the same air of slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied the tradition of "two fat volumes....of undigested masses of material" and took aim at the four venerated figures. The work's fame came to rest on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on his subjects who had until then been regarded as heroes. Upon publication, the book established Strachey in the literary world and placed him firmly in the top rank of biographers.